Resources: Tools for Community Action

The CCSJ program released Gearing Up for Action: A Curriculum Guide for Freight Transport Justice in October 2010 in order to build the power and capacity of communities to participate in decision making regarding freight transportation. This curriculum guide is designed to help communities grappling with freight transport issues share their experiences, explore the root causes of freight transport impacts, identify those responsible for dealing with these causes, and develop a plan for advocacy to advance their solutions. The activities in this guide have been designed to help community leaders engage groups of community members around freight transport issues to learn more about freight transport and connect it to their own experiences.

TheWest Oakland Environmental Indicators Project is the culmination of two years of research and analysis and is the fruit of an unusual collaboration between grassroots advocacy groups, community residents, and a research organization. After in-depth discussion with a neighborhood-based steering committee, the Pacific Institute created a set of 17 indicators to track environmental conditions in West Oakland. The indicators look at issues ranging from air pollution and toxic contamination to gentrification and voting.

Our popular education and leadership development work focuses on elevating the voice and power of low-income communities and communities of color, where environmental pollution and poverty are concentrated, in environmental and economic decision-making. We partner with community-based organizations and coalitions to develop and co-facilitate popular education curricula and leadership development trainings on issues ranging from alternatives to incarceration to community resilience to climate change.

The Pacific Institute lends its technical expertise through targeted assistance to organizations doing work consistent with our values and mission. Types of technical assistance range from quantitative and qualitative data analysis and design and production of maps and spatial analysis, to review and critique of technical reports, to development of research instruments like surveys and indicators.

Our Community Mapping Initiative builds on over 10 years of experience with mapping projects and capacity-building workshops we have done with community and coalition partners on issues ranging from lead contamination risk and liquor store concentration to diesel pollution and access to open space. Community mapping tools we have used include hand-drawn mapping by residents over computer-generated base maps; spatial analysis using GIS (Geographic Information Systems) to answer questions posed by community residents; and internet-based mapping to document and share community knowledge. We also provide technical assistance in creating digital maps or conducting spatial analysis on a contract basis to nonprofit and community-based organizations working on environmental health and justice issues.

Our Community Resilience Fact Sheetscan be used by community leaders and residents to learn more about the actions they can take before, during, and after climate change impacts hit. They provide residents with tips and resources on how to better prepare for and protect themselves and their communities from climate change impacts from flooding, rising electricity costs, poor air quality, wildfires, rising water costs and water scarcity, and extreme heat.

The Pacific Institute and its collaborators, the Foundation for Democracy and Sustainable Development, the ISEAL Alliance, OneWorldStandards, and Real Reason, have launched two new websites - Framing Sustainability Standardsand Sustainability Standards 101- that use “framing” to demystify key concepts and issues related to sustainability standards. By talking about social and environmental standards in straightforward ways with engaging illustrations that define the issues, the new web tools help communicate to the layperson the unique role and value of sustainability standards systems in furthering sustainable development.

The CEO Water Mandate Water Action Hub is an online site designed to help companies efficiently identify potential collaborators and engage with them in water-related collective action to improve water management in regions of critical strategic interest. The tool allows users to identify potential collective action opportunities via river basins, organizations, projects, and collaboration action areas. The Pacific Institute, as part of the Secretariat of the UN Global Compact CEO Water Mandate, helped develop the Water Action Hub and the Guide to Water-Related Collective Action to work hand-in-hand in helping businesses effectively develop a collective action engagement around water management.

The Community Choices System is a decision-making support system to help local governments, NGOs, communities, and households make informed decisions about their water, sanitation, and hygiene solutions. The tool offers users information on proven and tested technologies, connects them to technical and funding groups for assistance when there is need, and incorporates information on users’ socio-economic, cultural, hydro-geological and environmental factors prevailing in their locality or household or community.

The Pacific Institute’s WASH SMS Project is creating a highly accessible communication and monitoring system that uses readily available mobile phones to collect and disseminate information that can fill multiple data needs – for poor residents, utilities, local governments, NGOs, as well as the average customer – and is designed to be accessible both to resource-strapped utilities and poor residents. Through crowd-sourcing it helps develop rich, actionable data that addresses critical urban WASH needs, and informs better policymaking, budgeting, and planning.

WECalc asks users a series of questions about their home water use habits, and based on inputted replies, estimates their water use and provides personalized recommendations for reducing it. WECalc also estimates users’ water-related energy use and associated greenhouse gas emissions and shows them how much they can save — and how to do it.

The Pacific Institute, in collaboration with Google, created WeTap to help the public easily find water fountains. Users also help add new fountains to the public database. WeTap encourages water agencies, cities, institutions, and developers to recognize and take care of the invaluable resource of free, accessible public drinking water fountains and to add new drinking fountains in public spaces.